Kickstarter: Is it going to kickstart the Gaming Industry to greatness?

Kickstarter’s role in the Gaming Industry and it’s future with Indie Games by Abigail Law

In recent years there has been lots of talk within the gaming community about where it is going. This is down to the fact gaming seems to be stagnating with the same few big game franchises releasing game after game with little innovation. These big games, such as Call of duty and FIFA, take up massive amounts of money because people want the “brand new” version of the game even though the current version is only slightly different. On top of this, the gaming companies only produce what seem to be the same game with different skins for exactly the same reason…money! These big budget games are made because the companies know they will sell and not necessarily because they are good or because of new ideas. This leads to the current situation of stagnation.

Divinity: Original Sin Screenshot IGN

However there may be a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Kickstarter. If you don’t know what Kickstarter is, it’s an online crowd funding service.

So if you have an idea but not the money, you can propose it to people across the world asking them to fund your idea in return for early access, small gifts or small perks. If people like the idea they’ll pay different amounts of funding, however you much reach 100% of your goal money for it to go ahead. With games the funding granted is generally rewarded with a complete copy of the game upon release and if you pay more you can get in-game perks, including sometimes getting an npc (no player character for none gamers) in game designed by you.

Now if you are like me you’ll realize what a great chance this is. Small companies or groups of friends with a great new idea and the skills to make it, who before would be turned down by the bigger companies because “it’s too risky”, can create their game with funding directly from their customers. And if there isn’t the want for the idea they are proposing no-one will lose money. This way of funding games has already lead to a whopping 1,229 successfully funded video games at the time of writing this article with more currently bidding for funding.

One of these successful games was Divinity: Original Sin which has achieved nearly 7 thousand positive reviews on steam and achieved an editor’s choice award from PC Gamer. If you compare the review ratings for Divinity: Original sin, achieving 9.0 (amazing) from both IGN and the community, to a big budget game such as Destiny, which achieved 7.8 (Good) from IGN and 8.0 (Great), you can understand why Kickstarter might just be kick-starting the gaming industry. Hopefully the big companies will start to pay attention, take a small risk and create new innovative games like the ones funded via Kickstarter. It will be good for both gamers and the companies, so come on guys fund more creative games because there is clearly an appetite for them.

1 Comment on Kickstarter: Is it going to kickstart the Gaming Industry to greatness?

While I agree kickstarter has certainly helped some legitimately great games; Divinity as mentioned above is fantastic and games not released yet like Star Citizen and Elite: Dangerous also look like they’re coming along great. There have been some cons with kickstarter though, projects that have been backed, then released missing content and incomplete and the backers have been able to do nothing about it really. Games like Spacebase DF-9 and Broken Age are two examples of products that came out half finished because the companies ‘ran out of money’ leaving the people expecting a full product not able to do much about it. While it is a good idea in some cases and has proven itself with games like Divinity: Original Sin and Wasteland 2 it isn’t particularly sustainable and can leave some people who didn’t just pay the price of the game, but potentially alot more given the higher reward tiers, left severely wanting.

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